Yep. The name of the game right now in MENA is grabbing a chunk of Syria's reconstruction and development business [0] because it's a $200B bonanza [1] that can also now be connected with the IMEC bonanza [2], with Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati funds all competing against each other and leveraging EPCs and vendors that they have stakes or partnerships with across MENA, Europe, the US, and Asia.
> But "Western" is wrong, because the same cultural sphere extends to Australia, New Zealand, and Russian Far East
Yes. And Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are viewed as "Western" in American discourse as well. The Russian Far East isn't though.
> From my perspective, as someone from the Northern fringes of Europe, Latin American society and culture feel fundamentally familiar
> Out of the Latin American countries I'm most familiar with, Peru feels more European...
Frankly, a Finn isn't the right person to make this distinction. And if you've been to Peru you most likely spent the bulk of your time in Miraflores and other European parts of Lima, and not the majority indigenous hinterland. The European-Indigenous fault line is a major faultline in Peru going back to the Shining Path days.
BendingSpoon isn't PE because they are not attempting a restructure to then exit out of the asset within a defined time period.
When BendingSpoon or IAC acquired an asset, it's meant to be held by them in order to augment their existing portfolio.
M&A isn't the hallmark of PE - restructuring an asset in order to exit out of it at a profit is.
The classic PE monetization strategy is to acquire an underperforming asset, restructure said asset, and then exit the asset at around 20% IRR.
BendingSpoons on the other hand is a holding company that is acquiring and consolidating stagnant but large SaaS platforms into a single mega-platform.
The economics are different as are the operational and organizational structures.
> Aren't all these panels coming from China anyway
Turkiye not China in this case.
Turkiye has a large PV fabrication industry as well [0][1][2][3] and it's Turkish companies that are leading reconstruction with Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati capital [4].
The Turkish company selected for most of these projects (Kalyon Group) is also in the PV fabrication business [3] and Erdogan aligned.
> Latin America is clearly European, in the sense I understand the concept
But depending on where you are in Latin America as well as their familial background they may or may not associate with a European identity.
The LatAm states who associate the most with Europe are also the most racial homogenous (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) because of mass European migration in the late 19th and 20th century.
Other larger states like Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Dominican Republic, etc do not associate with Europe because these were highly mixed societies with large indigenous or African populations, and anti-Europeanism is almost as strong as anti-Americanism for historical reasons (eg. The French invasion of Mexico in the 1860s, the Mayan genocide in 1980s Guatemala led by white Guatemalan leadership).
Most Latinos know they aren't viewed as kin by Europeans and don't view them as kin either.
> I don't see Europeanness as something associated with specific ethnic groups or states. It's a cultural package that started spreading from the Roman Empire and was imposed upon different peoples at different times
But you need to accept you are European to truly be European, which we do not - look at the rise of "Heritage American" as an identity amongst White Americans.
Europeans are invalidating almost 400 years of domestic American cultural development as well as minimizing African, Native, and Asian American influences - which is a major cultural influence in vast swathes of the US - by pushing this notion that America is "European" and as such has an obligation to Europe.
We aren't European. We're Western.
The US has had it's own culture and European influence waxes and wanes depending on region, and most Americans simply don't view Europe as important anymore since 2008-09.
Yes, but most do not associate with some form of European identity or solidarity. The overwhelming majority of African Americans do not view Europeans as their kin and vice versa. Same with a plurality of Latinos depending on where they come from as well as their race.
OP's comment represents a very common sentiment and implication I've noticed amongst Europeans:
1. That America is inherently "European" and always will be
2. America has an obligation to Europe over other regions of the world
3. Americans view Europe as more important than other regions of the world
4. That Americans from non-European backgrounds are not in policymaking positions or that our opinions don't affect American political discourse
The Atlanticist world that existed from 1945 to 2008 only existed because the older generation of national security advisors and foreign policy hands in the US were first-generation European immigrants.
Their era is long gone on both sides of the aisle. Culturally, America is much closer now to Latin America or Asia looking at music, television, and fashion. Economically (based on bilateral trade flow), America is much closer to Asia and the Americas than Europe. And even demographically, those with living blood ties to Europe are a fraction of those with living blood ties to Asia or Latin America.
And the rise of "Heritage Americans" as an ethnic identifier also highlights how the one subgroup of white Americans who might have been open to keeping ties with Europe is turning their back on the continent as well.
Asia and the Americas are prepared for such a world, but Europeans still think America has some obligation to help them or treat their states as equals when they are at best junior partners.
What I mean is we aren't going to give European states undue favoritism due to personal ties, which Brzeziński, Kissinger, and Albright all did in some shape or form.
After 1945, Western Europe got Pan-Atlanticism but now much more dynamic South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc got dictatorships, military rule, and single party rule.
Now that we are pivoting to our Hemisphere and Asia due to G2, the gloves have begun to fall off with regards to Europe.
US-Asia trade already dwarfs US-Europe trade, and Europe is a secondary concern compared to G2.
> One of my favorites is that Santa Fe has been the capital city of Nuevo Mexico since 1610. Acoma, another city in modern-day New Mexico, is about 500 years older still
We were taught this in California in elementary school. Spanish colonial history actually tends to be taught at the same time or earlier than East Coast history in much of the American West (usually as "California" or "Texas" or "Colorado" history).
As an Asian American I strongly disagree, as do most others of us non-white Americans.
You guys don't actually understand how stuff actually works here or how we think. Our (Asian and Latino) ancestral countries economies are heavily tied with the US and leadership in our ancestral countries (excluding PRC ofc) remains either pro-Trump (look at the elections all across Latin America this year) or pro-America but Trump ambivalent (eg. Brazil and India).
And unlike Europe, at least in Asia all the states began arming and building strategic autonomy all the way back in the Obama 1 admin as part of the "Pivot to Asia".
You guys also don't seem to get the fact that the plurality of Americans have viewed Asia and not Europe as our most important partner since all the way back in 2009 [0].
We (the non-Europe aligned Americans) are increasingly climbing the rungs to become the decisionmaker's now in both parties.
Benign Atlanticism is dead in 2026. All that matters now is G2.
If that means both us and China squeezing Europe until it pops, so be it - when elephants fight it's the grass that gets stomped on.
At least 25% of us Americans have never had blood or ethnic ties with Europe.
African Americans make up around 15% of the US, Asian Americans around 7%, Arab Americans around 1.5%, and Native Americans around 2%.
That percentage is likely much higher when you factor Latino Americans - the plurality of whom either have indigenous or African ethnic origins. And some of America's richest and most politically powerful states like California and Texas have some of the lowest rates of European heritage in the nation.
This whole "America is European" mentality reeks of West European supremacy and fails to recognize how diverse America is. The only European ethnic groups who still have active blood and ethnic ties with the old country tend to be Central and Eastern Europeans or Irish Americans - large pluralities of whom were forced to leave the old country due to colonial reasons (the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and British rule in Ireland was equally destructive as colonial rule outside Europe).
Alternatively, the only reason Western Europe didn't have a Park Chung Hee, Suharto, or Zia was because Europeans who were naturalized Americans like Brzeziński (Poland), Kissinger (Germany), and Albright (Czechoslovakia) ran policy during the Cold War era.
The modern equivalents of Brzeziński, Albright, and Kissinger are all either Heritage (ie. Pre-Civil War), Latino, Asian, or Arab American.
Why should European states be given privileges that Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and others weren't extended until the last 30 years?
> I have an undergrad in Philosophy ... It is a highly underrated degree
I agree with that. A philosophy major is the ultimate interdisciplinary major because it is essentially the theory of knowledge. That said, I wish universities mandated humanities and social science majors dual major with a STEM field and vice versa.
Interdisciplinary knowledge is critical now that fields are starting to merge and overlap heavily.
And if you remember 2010-13 Egypt was also on the verge of collapsing into a civil war like Syria and Yemen yet didn't. That took a Herculean amount of effort.
And there was no guarantee that Egypt would have reached this point today in 2026.
A decade ago, the safer bet would have been that Egypt would collapse just like it's then developmental peer Syria.
The fact that Egypt is at this point today is a testament to the fact that it's has robust enough state capacity that it was able to execute on projects.
> better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990
Czechia is not Eastern Europe and was a very developed country. I'll wait for inglor_cz to eventually jump into this convo and give context around Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in the 1980s to 90s.
Yes. And they're the same companies that were contracted and subcontracted infrastructure across the Khaleej and ASEAN.
Larsen & Toubro, Wabag, SP Group, EIL, Afcons, and others tend to have a chokehold on implementing and executing these kinds of projects in MENA because they co-finance projects with Gulf capital players who tend to have capital stakes in these Indian players as well.
> It's practically a project of the Egyptian military who will mostly own the land
It's a public-private project with Gulf and Asian financing and execution.
Sisi is a dictator, but he can and does execute. Look at how Egypt's developmental indicators have shot up over the past decade - that was not guaranteed, and he deftly took advantage of non-Western partners to push the reforms Egypt needs.
I've been in Egypt and India - they aren't that different, and it's Indian companies that are working on and helping financing these megaprojects in Egypt via the credit line established after the pandemic [0] and it's Indian companies like Wabag that are implementing water treatment projects in Egypt [1].
State and financial capacity is much stronger in Egypt today versus previous attempts.
Egypt's developmental indicators have finally caught up to where the CEE was 5-10 years ago but with a better demographic profile, and Gulf and Asian capital and technology partners are much more hands-on.